The Thirteenth Sign : An Ancestral Zodiac by Hermione Harvestman (1974)

The second series of Catweazel was shown in the early months of 1971, and whilst not quite as enchanting as the first, I was nevertheless drawn into the astrological narrative arc and the notion of The Thirteenth Sign. It seems that much of my music from that point on explores astrological ideas to a greater or lesser extent, be they bespoke musical 'readings' for several of my friends or else a number of sequences of miniatures conceived as 'aural zodiacs' with each 'sign' based around one of the twelve notes on my synthesiser keyboard.

This is a very basic device I know - but so much of my explorations in electronic music have been about discovering a more intuitively naive approach to spontaneous experimentalism which involves effectively unlearning the musical basics which only get in the way of a truly 'new' music. Synthesisers reveal to us hitherto undreamed of possibilities of musical language & thinking; I despair that they should be put to such menial use as reproducing 'classics' and augmenting so-called progressive rock music with 'solos' (with significant exceptions, such as Brian Eno's VCS3 prelude to 'Gloria Gloom' on Matching Mole's Little Red Record).

Here, the technology defines the music afresh. In doing so, it is being entirely traditional with respect of 50,000 years of human music making born from listening to the wind, animals and birds and seeking to mimic their cries on the available technology of the time. I see their antler-bone whistles and bull-roarer spirit-cries as the true ancestors of the synthesiser, itself a means to address once more the pure sounds of nature re-imagined in a new sense of wonder and mystery. Did Catweazle ever encounter a synthesiser? If so, I dare say it would have been a means of great magic and enchantment. Electrickery? For sure!

I must say, that as a stargazer & star dreamer I'm not given to astrology per se, but the continuity of the Zodiac over the last 4.000 years or so does inspire a certain marvel purely in human terms, seeking an order in nature, and some pattern in the glad chaos of it all which lingers even unto this very day. That said, if someone asks my star sign I invariably say Orion, who was high in the sky a the time of my birth. At the time I didn't know about the alignments of the pyramids on the Giza Plateau, much less that of the Thornborough Henges in Yorkshire, but it seems the ancients were forever plotting to build heaven on earth.

The main sequence here is An Ancestral Zodiac from autumn 1974, with three supplementary tracks from 1973 and 1971 by way of contrast and comparison. The 1973 piece is a journey through the circular heavens, whilst the two 1971 pieces are what I call 'Early Music' in that they represent some of my first faltering steps in the realms of pure electronica. They find me in my newly set-up studio in my home in rural County Durham in the dark cold autumn of 1971 : the unlearning curve begins!

Hermione Harvestman.